Sunday, November 01, 2015

Daylight saving time!

We knew to 'fall back' last night. We would have an extra hour! Our biological clocks need time to adjust, though, so we were awake at the hour we usually do- in the dark. And for the next couple of days we'll be hungry in the middle of the morning and not knowing when to go to bed!

I hate these changes! I wish we could be like the Chinese who have the same time zone throughout that vast country, no daylight saving time, just get used to it wherever you may be.

For several days after we have changed from one time to the other and back, I am always asking myself, "What time is it, actually? And what time was it at this time yesterday?"

Forget it.  Just go around the house and change all the clocks. The cuckoo clock, so low tech, is frantic, waiting for someone to pull the chain.  Our new technology in computers and cars and such do this seamlessly now. No longer do I have to see for months that the current car is an hour off and I must shuffle through the instructions about how to set the clock or not do it and forever more know that the car clock is an hour off. They are smarter than I, these modern car clocks and computers.

Several years ago, we went on a business trip to Arizona, just at the cusp of the change from daylight savings to standard time. We were invited for brunch at a reasonable time as we calculated, knowing that the time had changed, and we arrived at this home in an upscale community. (The boss was coming for brunch.) When we rang the doorbell a sleep disheveled teenager opened the door, OMG!
Lots of scuffling, shoving stuff under the furniture, yelps. I was charmed by the authenticity of Arizona hosting?

It wasn't until we left that I realized that we had probably arrived two hours earlier than we were expected! Arizona did not at this time make the change from Daylight savings time to standard time that most of the other states do.

I like dining by candle light, and with the time change this is possible. Tonight, though, it was so hot we had the fans churning.

So, now, I think it is earlier than I thought- or is it later?? I do know that when in the morning I go out to hear the dawn chorus of birds maybe I'll be able to see some of them.

Monday, October 12, 2015

The Games we Play




































































































































































































































































































































Old folks like us are constantly doing what we can to maintain our edge. We hate it that we cannot recall that name or that film or that novel or celebrity or that perfect word. In ten seconds they will come back to our brains, but we worry about getting Alzheimers or just going gaga.

So we try to stay sharp by doing crossword puzzles and online brain games. My daily shot of brain boosting is learning another language. Since I live in a community where Spanish is spoken, and where I have to connect with parents and kids, this seemed to be a natural. I love to be in the community here when I have to interact with only Spanish speakers. What I need to say is pretty basic, and what they say to me is also basic.

I make excuses to go to the local Bravo supermarket where I can ask "tiene pimientos secos?" I love to try out my Spanish with the veggie person who guides me on how hot the peppers are. I love connecting with those mammas and their kids at school.

But, in Pimsleur Language, I now can say that when I was in Belize it was unfortunate because we had a flat tire and my cell phone dropped and was broken and my fiancé had a stomach problem, but my mother-in-law fell and injured her knee.

We are making a trip to Cuba in the near future, and I think that all I will need to say is "where is the restroom?"

What I really do to exercise my brain is to walk ten thousand steps every day, go to Tai Chi twice a week and attend Jazzercize every week. And I love to be a caretaker of this magnificent land (and that is hard work!).

Working with kids, growing gardens, maintaining contacts with old friends and making new friends are key to keeping my edge. My volunteer work takes me to interesting places and frames of mind. Every day I work on my artistic things, quilts and such, and I am never bored. Always something new happening.

My life is good. However,  I worry about the future of this country and this planet.





























The

Saturday, October 10, 2015

Uneasy with Change

A huge glossy book of a catalog arrived in the mail today. It was for International Expeditions, a travel company I used many years ago, once for a family trip to Belize, and once on a pharmacology trip to the Amazon. I realized that the trips are to all the places I have been- amazing! Central and South America, Africa.

What stunned me was the luxuriousness of adventure travel right now. There are vessels with huge air conditioned suites, known chefs, perfect white tablecloths and jacuzzis in the bathrooms.

Around the turn of this last century (I love to say that!), when I was still teaching, my best friend and I took off for ten days each year to go to Central and South America. The Galapagos, Costa Rica, Panama, Peru, The Pantanal, more Peru.. It was such adventure! We cobbled together the trips on a shoestring and it was fantastic just getting there. Small boats driving against giant waves, tiny four seater airplanes, dug out canoes, horseback treks, lots of hiking. We were never in a huge group of other tourists (except in the case of the pharmacy folks with their huge suitcases). We quickly learned that we could hire just the stuff we needed such as the person to help us navigate the Ecuadoran airport during a coup, or the boatman to take us upriver to a biological station or the guide in just a loin cloth to take us on a long and hot hike to see Harpy Eagles. These were not your luxury digs! Not your packaged tour.

The Galapagos boat was spare, 12 passengers, and our room was tiny and cramped. No A/C, but on the back balcony was a wonderful seal lounging about every day.

The lodges where we stayed were always primitive and they always made us so happy. Could we ever forget the bumping around every night of the sally lightfoot crabs that lived under our beds? Or the howler monkeys in Peru who serenaded us nightly as we wrapped up in our bed nets far from any internet. We would not trade those fabulous bathrooms on the upscale tourist boats for the lively experience of having to shoo away a pink toed tarantula from the out house seat, or a tapir from the restaurant. Who could forget a huge cliff thick with every colored parrot? Who could forget happening upon a shaman while hiking alone and it turned out that he wanted to wash my hair? And I let him.

We were hot most of the time as we hiked everywhere in these places. On a trail in the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica, our first trip together, the guide suddenly stopped, and the two of us stood stock still and we smelled the faint odor of cat! Who could forget such an experience? Or swimming in a black lagoon, totally alone..

We have so many memories that would be impossible if you were in a large guided group. On a horseback ride in the Pantanal with cowboys, a caiman rose up and bit one of the cowboys on the foot. My travel companion (diagnostician manqué) tended to the wound and we were able to get medical help. It could have been me!

No one I know does anything like this anymore (except for one person, Chelsea). These are great memories, better than any things we might have bought or acquired. But these kinds of old things are not so available anymore. It seems that folks need to have their fancy bathrooms, their A/C and their internet. Pink dolphins in the sunset are not a priority.


Tuesday, September 08, 2015

Reinventions

As I find myself deeper and deeper into the retirement years, I am fascinated with how so many people I know are reinventing themselves in small and large ways. This is part of the American character!

Telling you some stories of these folks, I will not name names (the internet being what it is).

Beginning with me, whose name you all know, I imagined myself as an older person who could be quite idiosyncratic and reach out to do some things I was exploring. So, community organizing seemed to be it and I dived into a vision of making one small community come alive. There was, and still is, so much to do and now, every time I look at our new community center my eyes tear up. I love the diverse people I work with every day in the school and in the community garden. I love being an activist embedded with these other people. I love learning from them.

I had a vision, as well, of being able to have the time for the fabric arts I love to do. Sure, I have made hundreds of quilts in the last ten years- all idiosyncratic. All the quilts and rugs and jellies I make are given away. We have enough of everything.

One man I know, an artist and car restorer and racer, reinvented himself by giving up alcohol, tobacco, any drugs. This enabled him to be the father to his kids he really always wanted to be and in the process of reinventing himself is working on some other life changes. This is a reinvention in progress.

Another friend used to be an artist and a potter who produced many lovely and practical works so many people use and love, eat out of and hang on their walls. She just abruptly gave this all up, sold all of her inventory and ceramic tools. Their kids have left to pursue their dreams elsewhere. She sold her large house that she used for all this and she and her husband bought an incredibly beautiful and richly appointed condo with magnificent views of the waterfront. Gone were the traces of an artistic life, gone were the gardens her husband tenderly cared for.

And now, she has reinvented herself as a cracker-jack realtor, a savvy businesswoman in the upscale real estate market. Her husband says he is not sorry to see the garden go. He's now into golf.

They are very happy, maybe more happy than they were before. Seems that this is a reinvention that works.

And then there is Charlene, who regularly reinvents herself over the years. Usually these reinventions are religious. For several years she was intensely Catholic and the images in her art (she is a well-known tile artist) were all about the Virgin Mary and halos. I once took a trip with her to Italy and she was practically catatonic when she viewed the Medieval religious painting in the Ufizzi. A couple of years ago, she walked the whole religious trail from northern Spain to the sea.

Shortly after that she gave up alcohol and that was the most major reinvention of her life so far (as I see it). But, wait! The big reinvention was her complete involvement in Buddhist meditation. This has taken her to Miramar for months and many other places to be in silence.

I salute these folks, these seekers. I love to hear about former students who are exploring psychoactive herbal drugs in South America, I salute the gifted musicians who really wanted to be chefs and now are doing it. I salute the risk-takers of all ages who have the daring to reinvent themselves, and, of whatever age, just go for it!

Friday, July 31, 2015

Incarceration: some questions

Prisons, death row, prison revolts. All of these issues were what I never wanted to read about , hear about and think about. Those indefatigable souls who defended and investigated were off in the ether to me. I have had so much on my plate here outside of jails and prisons to think about and contribute to.

Now, however, thinking about this new Obama initiative to allow prisoners to be able to have access to Pell grants and college, and thinking about the Chicago prison warden who is totally addressing the issues of mental illness in prisons, I am drawn to thinking hard about these things.

We have way too many people in prison in this country, and a high proportion of them are people of color. A high proportion of prisoners are there because of drug offenses and other low level crimes. Many others have serious mental illness, not really addressed in prison.

It seems brilliant to me that we should give prisoners a chance at college. Pragmatically, it will give these folks a shot at success in the world and they will not be tied to the safety net when they emerge from incarceration. This will save us taxpayers so  much. And it is the right thing to do.

It troubles me that most of our conservative representatives in Congress have a negative knee jerk response to anything pragmatic and humanly inclusive. Seems mean spirited to me that those folks in congress always vote against anything that could possibly help folks (especially people of color) and the future of our country. It sometimes seems to me that these conservative GOP folks have never had the opportunity to see real poor people, or Black people, or people who are desperate for health insurance and scratching for everything they can. They are short sighted and ignorant.

So, when our Congress, State and National, meet, they mostly have no idea of what matters to the real people. They don't get it that so many of our citizens are incarcerated in prisons across the land.
And they completely dis anyone who is in prison.





Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Summer Vegetable garden gone crazy

In these days of the summer doldrums with heavy rain each day, I go out to inspect the vegetable garden that has fed us throughout the fall and winter and spring.

Summertime when the days are humid and the sun is punishingly hot, no tomatoes will set fruits, and mostly everything else is past. We still have okra and black-eye peas, neither of which we care enough about to pick. Eggplants, sweet potatoes growing everywhere and peppers strive meekly to produce a few fruits among the weeds that now have taken over everything.

The stalwart volunteer army of the zinnias and cosmos and red sage entice the butterflies by the dozens. Soon enough it will be time to clear out the seminole pumpkin vines and the sweet potato vines, and cut back the sprawling tomatoes. But, for now, we can relax, let the stink bugs have their way and enjoy all the insects that are here in this magical garden.

Skunk vines cling tightly to the deer fence and one early morning I will cut them down.

Meanwhile, the lawn is green and vast, the bromeliad garden and the others are doing well. Rainy season is just about my favorite. I have ordered the fall seeds and bulbs and my husband has begun constructing and installing the new raised beds for the vegetable garden.

The garden spiders are busy depositing their egg cases in each place they call their own, frogs are calling every night in joy after the rains, the hummingbirds are frantic to get enough nectar from our feeders.

I picked several pounds of grapes today - determined to get them before the raccoons do- and tomorrow I will make grape jelly.


Friday, July 17, 2015

TKAM, another view

I have read Mockingbird so many times out loud to generations of students, and to four grandchildren. We have watched the film together and noted that the editing was deficient, but, on the whole we loved Gregory Peck and the passel of characters that were so familiar to us. We choked up as Atticus was going out of the courthouse after the trial and Jem, Scout, and Dill watched from the 'colored' balcony as their father was passing by and all the colored folks stood up.

This book was never preachy, and there were so many ideas to conjure with - not just the race issues, but justice in all forms. (And how many kids that I know to whom I have explained 'rape'?)  It was about the tension between Scout and her culture there in Macomb, Alabama. Most of all, kids from ten on up, could think about Boo Radley and his eventual coming into the light as a good and true person.

TKAM has been a touchstone for so many millions of young and old Americans. It was perfect just as it was. Kids got it that when Atticus shot the rabid dog surprising things can happen.

So, when the new book was announced I pre-ordered it, lined up to buy it, made time to read it.

The pundits had gotten there before me and they scorned this newly discovered novel. (Maybe they only read the first ten pages!)  Lots of folks, who, like me, have loved Harper Lee's first book unlike any other, said they would not read "Go Set a Watchman".

There is probably some back story about the discovery and publication of this newly discovered work we will not immediately know. No doubt greed in publishing is a factor.

Today, I finished "Go Set a Watchman".  I choose not to think of this excellent coming-of-age novel as connected to TKAM. Yes, there are references and expansions of some of the prior experiences of Jem and Scout in their Macomb childhood.

This novel can stand on it's own. In the light of recent events in Charleston and elsewhere, we need to think about these thorny issues of race. "Watchman" is sometimes shrill. I think of a young person whose thoughts and ideals just tumble out too fast with too many words. Jean Louise, at twenty-five,  now living in New York as a writer,  is inflated with so many emotions about her culture in both places, and making peace with her father and her origins, stumbles all over herself. The passage of Jean Louise's visit to her uncle Jack probably tells the whole story. It ints true.

This new novel has the signature Harper Lee's  excellent writing - sometimes spare, other times folding into pedantic literature.

This book is not TKAM. Don't expect it to be!

I love that this book has come out at a peak of our national interest in race relations. Something to think about!






Friday, June 26, 2015

Changing our Thoughts

Looking back on my life, there are, of course many things I wish I could take retract. As do we all.

It was a stellar week in some ways, and a total jolt in another. Seeing our president singing Amazing Grace brought tears to my eyes. And I cried with joy at the news that the Supreme Court affirmed the legitimacy of gay marriage. Personally, this means so much because my child is married to her wife, they are bringing up a kid, and I have been crazy with fear that their domestic life could be so compromised by law. Now, we can relax.

I was jubilant that the Court came out in favor of the spirit of the ACA. I have seen so many folks here in Florida who have truly benefited, and who would be devastated if the ruling had been the other way.

In the aftermath of the Charleston massacre, we all must search our souls. The ACA has been done, and the gay marriage issue is resolved throughout the nation.

And now, we need to move on and address the hard issue of racism in America. Each one of us needs to search our souls and conscience - all of us, black, white, hispanic and whatever. First of all, we need to know each other, and then, perhaps, over time, we can forgive each other as the families of the nine slain in Charleston have done.

One thing by another thing, we need to go back and see what we are doing that promulgates the divide of race and ethnicity.

For example, we need to ask ourselves about the diversity of our friendships and our kids' friendships. Those dinner parties, those play dates- how diverse are they?

Monday, June 15, 2015

Do we have Lyme disease?

The "Peoples' Pharmacy' on NPR had a guy this week who had a mysterious case of what turned out to be Lyme Disease. He was a hot shot doctor in Miami, where of course, there is no such thing. It was a riveting show. It took four years to have this thing diagnosed and he ended up having to get a heart transplant.

Everyone has mysterious symptoms from time to time, and mostly, they go away and we never think about them again, let alone have to get an organ transplant. But this program made me think about all the dangers from day to day living we face.

Most of the time my skin is pocked with ant bite blisters, spider bites, gardening nicks, bruises and scrapes, age spots from too much sun over the years, and I don't worry too much about them beyond getting an annual full body check from my dermatologist. But I do check myself every day for the ticks that may have taken up living somewhere on my skin. Usually they announce themselves with a sharp specific itching.

I have been assured by my health practitioner that we do not have Lyme ticks here in Florida. But I wonder if I have had any number of tick born diseases in my lifetime? I am outdoors every day, often in thick woods and knee deep grass, and I rarely use insect repellant or wear clothes that protect from insects.

We do keep tweezers in every room so that we can remove ticks when we get them. (It's a must to have a partner who can examine nether places one can't access.)

When we take a vacation to some urban area and stay for a week or so, all the spots on my skin disappear, the bottoms of my feet become pink and soft, not gnarly and gritty. I discover no new ticks or mysterious bites. I feel ready for being public.

I guess it's the big trade-off. I could live in a lovely and pristine urban condo, and I would not worry about getting Lyme and Chickemunga and Leptospyrosis and Jaws and Maws and other horrid diseases, real or imagined. But I decide to take the risks of being free roaming in the natural world of the pristine Florida Green Swamp.  Maybe I have had all these diseases by now and I got over them and now have the immunities I need.

So, early mornings, I go out to check for tracks to see what's been there over night, and see what wildflowers are in bloom, if the barred owl is hunting in the creek, and look for swallow tailed kites and the crane families and the ibises gleaning in the wetland meadows. I have forgotten, once again, to apply the insect repellant. We have few mosquitoes because they are immediately eaten by myriad predators. I do not worry about West Nile Virus.

Maybe I will die of some insect born disease, or I will be bitten by a rattle snake or a black widow spider, or I could be attacked by an alligator though I doubt it. I tell our most timid visitors that for every snake you see, there are a hundred nearby that you don't. I love pointing out the hundreds of frogs at any given time one can see around our home. Many of them somehow find their way inside the house, so we have all become adept in frog catching. "O.K, guys, you have to go out side," I hear my spouse saying to the current group as he is brushing his teeth.

What is sheer paradise for me is terrifying to others. I am beginning to get that. So, mostly, I invite the kids into my world, and we seem to be on the same wavelength.

Thursday, May 28, 2015

Tai Chi and Me

About a year ago I decided to try Tai Chi. I had no real idea what this ancient form of martial arts was, but I had seen dozens of folks in a park in San Francisco a few years earlier and they looked so peaceful and balletic all practicing their moves in unison. I knew then that I wanted to do this too.

I had seen the sign for Tai Chi in a Karate studio along a route I often take on my daily rounds so I stopped in to sign up for a twice weekly class that met at a convenient time. I paid for three months of classes, bought a black Tai Chi tee shirt, found an old pair of soft and baggy black pants, and I was ready!

The Tai Chi master, Ms. Linda, a champion black belt, gave me a print out of instructions, really nothing but a list of all the 109 moves. Yikes!

There is a red square in the middle of the rubber floor of the studio, and that is where Ms. Linda placed me. I was surrounded by men and women who were so far beyond my competence! No one ever coached me in how to do all the moves. I just have to watch others carefully. It took weeks before I knew when and how to bow in and out!

When I decide to do something, I don't dabble. I commit. For Tai Chi I committed to going to each class unless there was a real reason.

I began to see what great exercise this is for the mind and body and breath. Unlike Yoga, one doesn't have to be nose to a mat. It's all upright with deep knee bends, plies and stretching. Before Tai Chi I had thought that I might be a candidate for a hip replacement, and now I can't remember which hip it was!

In Tai Chi there is no competition, just friendly silence and the sounds of all of us breathing deeply. We have no mission to find out about each other, though from time to time, the back stories appear. As in so much else of the life we lead here, the people are of all colors, ages, walks of life. I glean that the Tai Chi people are pilots, doctors, quilt makers, ranchers, snowbirds..

At the end of my first year, I received my first 'belt'-white. It will take many more months to get my blue belt. But who knows?

In the class we do a couple of the whole Tai Chi rounds. In between, the people who do swords and fans do that. After many months I decided to participate in the sword forms and so I bought a beautiful wooden sword and I fling myself and my sword around, hoping that I will not decapitate anyone nearby. People are patient.

What about all those 109 moves? Well, it gets easier. I still watch Ms. Linda, and mostly I can anticipate what is coming next. Sometimes it seems graceful and seamless to me. While doing this I only think of breathing. It will be awhile before I could lead the class, but I know that might be never. It is not a competition.

I have a wonderful wooden sword and I am working to perfect the sword forms one and two. Doing this is good for my arthritic wrists, not to mention my concentration! Using a sword also addresses my basic ten year old boy self. I think I will never be able to wield two swords at once as some of the others do. But today I received a beautiful red silk fan that someday I might be able to wield in that graceful Tai Chi fan dance. I will practice opening it, slapping it shut, throwing it in the air and catching it. And then, I will be ready to be a newbie in fans.

Tai Chi is so ancient, and yet so appropriate for today. It is the opposite of the digital world. Everything there is quiet and so relaxed. We are in the moment, and that is quite delightful.

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

The Graduate

Here we are in the usual graduate photo of the honoree and his paternal grandparents, But, Wait! There were many more grandparents making up this amazing village that reared this amazing young man.

Diego had this special suit made for him for his graduation from Bard College on Saturday. He had his claque sitting for hours in the tent waiting for that glimpse of him making his way across the stage and flicking his tassel as he received his diploma.

Truly, it was a great two day celebration for this boy, youth, young man we have all loved and nurtured for almost 22 years.

This Diego was my first grandchild, and for that reason and for so many others, he was first under my heart. I have no doubt that he'll make his way and change a part of life on this earth.

There we all were- the family of parents, siblings, half siblings, in-laws, ex-laws, outlaws, godparents, aunties, uncles, cousins, friends, lovers, and everyone else. We were there to celebrate. And of course we did.

The party food was spectacular. The Puerto Rican and Spanish contingent provided much of the food (to die for!), people made cakes and desserts and fried cod fritters and heaps of salads and quiches and everything else one could imagine.

The weather in upstate NY where we gathered was a perfect clear bright blue, the little kids danced on the lawn, the recent graduates were polite to their parents, and everyone was glad to see each other, despite the history that would make some families cringe.

It was a real nice picnic and we're very glad we came..

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Back in the Garden

Here are Wilson Blount and Andrew digging potatoes today. We filled two five gallon pails with the spuds - enough for every child to take home enough potatoes for a meal. Everyone, kids and adults, love this potato harvest when we find such treasure underground. Our hands are black with dirt and we exclaim about every worm we find in this good soil.

It was so hot today, but no one complained. We removed many spent broccolis and gone to seed lettuces and the collards that were riddled with holes from the caterpillars. We examined the one tomato horn worm we found on a pepper plant. It was HUGE and I wanted to squash it, but it was taken away to the side of the woods.

There are still a few rows of beans about to produce and a full bed of cabbage, summer peas, peppers, okra, and the cheerful flowers along the walkway.

I love this companionable time with interested kids in the garden. I have no need to shoot out the teacher energy to get them on track. There is enough time to examine everything and we don't mind that some kids are sorting through worms, catching insects, washing the potato harvest. They are not thinking about what plants need to be removed to the compost or what cover crops we should plant for the summer. They are doing what kids should do. I celebrate this.

This is the best of the best!

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

What I love!

I'm back! I tried Tumblr and it was so gadgety and complex I couldn't spend the time navigating it.

I still find that I want to write about this paradise where I live, and I hope this site will still accept me.

Tonight we are having thunderstorms, most appreciated in the usual spring droughts. I always thank the gods of rain when I do not have to water the gardens for a day or two.

I am not about writing of fashion or aging any more. Tried those, but it's not me.

Today my spouse was not here. When I went outside I noticed that one of our traps had an enormous opossum, and so it was up to me to dispatch him. I chunked the 'have a heart'cage' into the trunk of my car and drove it out several miles close to the state lands where I intended to let him go.

This opossum would NOT go out of the trap! Here we are together in a vast field, and I, this 75 year old woman in shorts and flowered gardening gloves is trying to get him to please turn around and skedaddle. This is a BIG opossum and he is spitting and drooling and hissing and I think he would bite me if I gave him half a chance and I am thinking rabies and stitches and god knows what else.  So, I walk back to the edge of the pasture where I think I could find a sturdy stick. When I return the opossum is still there in the trap and the door is still open. These critters must have very small minds.

Plan B is to poke him from the rear.  The elicits just more snarling and hissing but he doesn't turn around. I turn the trap on its side so that he won't activate the door. But he leans against the activator pad so I must keep on releasing the door anyway. Finally, I realize that this animal is out to thwart me so I just jam the stick into the release mechanism to keep the door open. I leave the trap and the opossum in the middle of the field. I have other plans for the day.

Later, when I went out to retrieve the trap, it was empty.

So often, I think about what an unusual life I lead here in Green Swamp West. A day that includes critter release, so many bird sightings, deer everywhere, and, tonight, millions of fireflies in the palmettos gives me inordinate pleasure.

Friday, March 13, 2015

good bye, faithful friends

This is the last blog at this site. I have had a great time writing it over the years and some of you have appreciated it (or not!). So, I am off to be writing a double memoir with an old friend since toddlerhood. I will let you know where my new blog is on Facebook.
Our old dog died this week and many other threads of my life are coming together. The community garden flourishes, spring has come with many hummingbirds back and the swallow tailed kites wheeling overhead. The twin grandkids are turning three and the oldest grandson will soon be graduating from college.
I am still making quilts, still volunteering at the local elementary school.
Our place here in the Green Swamp is more beautiful than ever.
I am sick of contentious politics and still embarrassed by Florida!
Thank you, friends!

Wednesday, February 04, 2015

why I hate football

O.K. I know that grown men have cried when their super ball team lost on Sunday. Millions of Americans watched this gladiator blood sport. I don't get it.

Many years ago I would be so judgmental about this particular sport. Why would anyone want to watch people hurting one another??  Years pass and I learned to shut up and just observe this weird thing we know of as football. Of course, I would never have let my own kids play this sport. I was O.K. with soccer, baseball, basketball, tennis and swimming.

Now we know for sure that football damages the players. They have injuries that will be in their bodies and brains forever. We select the athletically best of our young men to spend themselves on the altar of football.

For many of our young men, almost always African Americans, football seems the best way out of poverty. I think that in doing this we may as well have been putting those muscled young men on the slavery block to be bought by the big business of professional sports. We send them to college first, and everyone knows that this is a farce because they are so ill prepared. Then they are bought by big business- the business of football. We pay them exorbitant amounts to play (and wreck their futures!).

But this is big business! All those ads! All the hype! Hotels and car rentals get big returns from the Super Bowl. Why are we surprised when our 'favorite quarterbacks' get into deep trouble with sexual assaults and domestic violence? Why are we surprised when we hear so often about our pro players cannot keep their financial lives together? Why are we surprised that such a large proportion of retired players have some kind of dementia from having their heads bashed again and again?

This so called sport is crazy and inhuman.

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Grandma in the digital world

After my garden club meeting today, at which we learned all about how to graft heirloom tomatoes, I stopped by the Verizon store to investigate getting a new and updated iPhone. The Verizon store is next to the feed store where I get gardening supplies and plants so it seemed doable.

I had done the research on the various phone deals; which phone would actually be best for me since I needed a better camera, which plan would cost the least. But I had put off doing this because of my frugality and how much I dislike the process of being in the hands of the young techies who are so smooth and fast, whipping their pointed thumbs across the screens and coming up with numbers that seem to change as I look at the screen.

My family knows that I am not good at shmoozing and hanging out, but that is just what it takes. I am good at hammering away at the bottom line.

The young man I dealt with was your typical young man who does this - slender, young, a bit nerdy, friendly. We discussed the various options of which phone would be the best for me. Though the biggest phone had some advantages, I couldn't imagine having conversations on a device as large as a toaster. So we settled on an older version, small enough to stick in the back pocket of my jeans and way cheaper, but was slightly bigger and had the updates to the camera and a few other marvels of technology, including a portable hotspot for other devices.

Now, I needed to have all the tremendous and untidy array of stuff on the old phone transferred to the new one. This required some passwords I have no clue about. No matter. My guy at the Verizon store, Greg, seemed to be able to do some work arounds to accomplish this.

All the while there was this multitasking chatter between us. After more than an hour I probably know more about Greg than I do about my own grandsons. In the course of the Big Transfer of data, Greg is searching Google Earth to locate my home. I am creeped out that Google street view is able to see our compound in such detail one can see our little dog squatting in the yard! Greg is fascinated with everything Dade City and is a foodie so we talk about restaurants.

Meantime, a number of couples as old as I am come into the store with questions about their old flip phones, and by the way, how do you turn this dang thing on? I am impressed with the politeness and warmth and patience these two guys in the Verizon store show to everyone.

By now, Greg and I are now old friends and we are trading stories about good restaurants in the Dade City environs and where the best hiking trails are. Everything from the old phone is now transferred to the new one. I will leave with directions for how to recycle my old phone.

When Greg returns home tonight, if he speaks of his day at all to his wife, will he say that this crazy old grandma of a person came into the store today, and knows about geometry - and she'll be my friend forever?? Who knows where serendipity will strike?

I love my new phone! It is almost perfectly configured and even easier than my last one.

Sunday, January 04, 2015

New Year, Old Dog

Here is our ancient dog that we thought was a goner several times in the past year. But! She still likes the quality of her life, the routines, the good meals, and being next to her people (who are polite enough not to notice that she really smells like an old farting dog.)

Many years ago, we invited a group of psychologists to come to our school to do workshops with the kids and staff about what it is to let go and move on. This particular one has resonated with me since then. I was directed to focus on the fact that people who are leaving let us know by being difficult. At that time I was dealing with the teenagers in my house who would soon be leaving for college - and they were just awful! They were telling me that it would be o.k. to leave. Our very old parents were hard at the end as well. They were telling us that it would be o.k. for them to leave.

Our old dog, Lola, is telling us that she would be o.k. to leave soon. We don't take walks anymore and she can barely get her hind legs to move. Sometimes she poops on the floor, and we have to carry her outside. We cannot really go anywhere because it is such an issue to get anyone to care for her in our absence. When she was younger, this was no problem. But who could ask a dog sitter to take on the geriatric issues of canine great age?

I remember this hardy little dog who ran with us on long walks and was the star of our neighborhood.We wonder how and when we'll know that her time is up?